Dark Night Of The Soul

[haai14]

Could i be going thru dark night of the soul but never before had any spiritual awakenings?

[Martin123]

@haai14 Yeah.
Could you talk a bit more about your experience? 

[haai14]

@Martin123

im on this path for about 1 year and in the last 6 months im having periods of about 5 6 days whit strong negative emotions, depression, social anxiety and fear. I feel so not in touch whit reality (for example if im in a room i dont feel that im in that room, i know i am but not feeling it), in a day i feel like i lived 5 different lives.If you ask me how im feeling i couldnt tell anything that would be true, i just dont know. Cant communicate whit people because i think im just in a different world. I cant find joy in anything. Im having hard time concetrating (its even hard for me to listen to music because cant concetrate on the sounds). Im still being productive (meditating, exercise, cold showers...). I didnt have any spiritual awakenings before. Its hard for me to explain i need time to process this.

Edited October 17, 2017 by haai14

[Martin123]

@haai14 it sounds like youre ready for nothing but love to lead the way.

I recommend checking out Matt kahn, whatever arises love that.

 

Now there’s no going back, and only love will make sense of this. 

Goood luck!

[Markus]

Could be regular ol' depression. The Dark Night of The Mind (which is usually what people call dark night of the soul) is when your expectations/ideas about enlightenment are proven wrong and you have to give them up. The Dark Night of The Soul is when identifications with aspects of your personality break down. The latter is more severe. I don't think you are likely to have either without any awakenings.

Love ya,
Markus

Edited October 17, 2017 by Markus

[Toby]

@Markus sounds like you read a Jan Esmann book.

@haai14 it is hard to tell if it is something like depression, depersonalisation or some symptoms of schizophrenia. Or if it is a dark night. But it is surely possible to have dark nights without awakenings or without noticing awakenings because they don't go all the way through.

[Markus]

31 minutes ago, Toby said:

@Markus sounds like you read a Jan Esmann book.

 

Yup. Do you agree with his assessment about dark nights? The of mind/of soul distinction makes sense to me.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Markus

[Nahm]

@haai14 In some cultures, they don’t dive into the depression, they see it as a nutritional issue. 

[Toby]

@Markus I don't really have an opinion on it and would have to reread it. First time I read it I thought that within his map it did make sense. But he didn't even speak about "dark nights" that can come long before any awakening. In St John of the Cross' terminology "dark night of the senses" for example come way before any "nondual" breakthrough: http://www.acfip.org/wpaths.html .

[Martin123]

1 hour ago, Toby said:

that can come long before any awakening

 

It can be tricky what one calls an awakening, or a glimpse.
For instance, I had an awakening after reading an article online in the Summer 2 years ago. And I had no idea it was one. So I forgot about it. It wasn't until I had another one, this summer (during the Eclipse day), that I remembered that this isn't the first time Im feeling this. 

So one can have an awakening and not remember it, and it can still trigger a process in us.
And just as with kundalini, some can have it after self-realization, some can have it before anything at all, I would say that the "process of awakening" - the purification of your nervous system to be able to uphold the states of enlightenment, can be triggered without an actual glimpse. There are many ways consciousness can awaken in all of us.

The reason why this is important is that many people track their progress by "how many glimpses they've had". That just isn't right. Glimpse doesn't mean anything. It doesn't necessarily have to mean a start, and it doesn't have to mean anything at all. It can be followed by a great shift in how we perceive life, but then again, if we say that the shift was "caused" by the glimpse, are we really sure about that?
What if the shift is caused by nothing, just as the glimpse was caused/cause by/of nothing.

And then comes the dark night! :-) And I can say this as someone who has been going through a very rough dark night for almost 2 years now.
According to Jan Essman, there is the DNO the mind and DNO the soul. Mind is falling apart of your mental constructs, and Soul is your kundalini integrating into your system all the dormant energy of your ego.
But what if, the entire life we live, is our dark-night? What if our entire life is our spiritual journey?
What if spiritual journey isn't something that happens after an experience, or when we start wondering about reality. What if the spiritual journey is the evolution of a soul/spirit, as it goes through the experiences of being a human!
What if every moment of your entire life, and all your lifetimes is a crucial part of your endless expansion, and what we call an enlightenment, is just the realization, or rememberance, that all is well, all is one, and there is inherently nothing to worry about. And that is the end of the dark night, and that's when shit gets good!
And the way we progress on the thing we call a "spiritual-path" - which is basically everything we do, because it serves only our highest evolution, but you know... we like to call it the times, when we buy that special meditation pillooow, and write on actualized.org, we stop calling her a nagging wife, we call her a demon, we don't go to work, but we are tortured by satan in hell, we don't get a house, but we receive a manifestation, we then sit on our butt and do this really weird activity where we just... sit, and judge ourselves, SO deeply.... and we call it a meditation, and then we go:
"oh my god, I did so well, I judged the shit ouf of myself, I think I abandoned my inner child and became one with god!"

And then we go to our friends, and instead of bragging to them about our new car, or the hot 20yo we just banged, we tell them about our "enlightenment experiences" and we write trip-reports, just to get validation and say "oooh this is just for you guys so you can benefit"..... weell... is it really? Reaallyy? Did you Really have to write in capslock I AM GOD and then say to yourself "it is for the greatest good of all".

Or we just write about the dark night of the soul, and make fun of the things other people do, and how they write trip-reports, and think to ourselves "pfuuhhh, Im so much better than all those people who write trip-reports online" (yeah I think I wrote that i am god one).



Everything is spiritual evolution. What sense would it make, if we divided behaviour into spiritual and non-spiritual. Intense periods, can be a dark night.

 

btw at this point I have no idea whom im answering, what Im talking about, or what Im answering, I think I started having too much fun. 

[Preetom]

@Martin123

Have you had what Jan Esmann calls self-realization? Which is complete and permanent dis-identification from small self/ego/karma/personality?

There can still be tons of  karma/neurosis/ego left but there is literally no identification with it.

From what I understood studying Jan's website is that Dark night of soul comes after self realization. Self realization is the very beginning of Enlightenment. There can be a loving self or a dark twisted self in your psyche but there is no identification with any of that. Starting from self realization, its a point of no return. The karma/ego starts restructuring itself (god consciousness stage) and it feels painful and miserable. But you don't suffer/identify with any of that.

Since you are pretty experienced with kundalini which generally comes after self realization, So have reached that permanent shift yet?

[Martin123]

17 minutes ago, Preetom said:

Have you had what Jan Esmann calls self-realization?

No.
The case that you first self-realized and then awaken kundalini has been most common.
I am one of those who awaken kundalini before self-realization, and that path will (hopefully) take me all the way. I am not so sure about this being too rare anymore. It is the return of the divine feminine/ shakti nowadays after all :). There seems to be a bunch of individuals with awakened kundalini w/o first self-r.

[Preetom]

@Martin123

so will self realization eventually happen?

or people with awakened kundalini before self realization will jump to unity consciousness all together. they will completely reconstruct their ego/karma and have the most harmonious loving unified self. But they won't have total and permanent dis-identification and experience the void consciousness. Is this where it's going?

And Jan also mentions that true dis-identification can only happen through self-realization. You can't fake it or temporarily have it. If you try hard to dis identify then it's just disowning/dissociation which is basically neurosis.

[Preetom]

@Martin123

Also can you please tell me what's your basic strategy now on this path? 

Are you going all out with love revolution? are you doing self inquiry meditation as well?

Do you mediate at all? if so what technique are you using right now?

Thanks in advance! 

[Martin123]

41 minutes ago, Preetom said:

so will self realization eventually happen?

or people with awakened kundalini

I have no idea.

 

11 minutes ago, Preetom said:

Are you going all out with love revolution?

Yeah thats right. A wonderful thing about kundalini is that, because you become so grounded in your body, you get quite a good feedback of what works or what doesnt. Nothing has ever worked better than love. 

My practice is genuinely being so gentle and compassionate with myself that I become best friends with my neuroses. And then love whatever arises. And ofc bring that attitude into all my relationships.

There’s even stuff like no-fap that are generally quite good for kundalini, but compared to love its almost insignificant in my exp. And eventhough I masturbate much less nowadays, it is a byproduct of the love and emotional freedom Ive cultivated.

 

I do meditate sometimes and its helpful to remind myself to be more relaxed and im my body, but I dont have a daily practice. Self-enquiry does NOTHING. At all. 

Also I watch a bunch of anime and that sometimes triggers powerful emotions in me (im completely serious, I wept throughout binging all of naruto). 

[Preetom]

@Martin123

so you don't investigate/inquire on the sense of 'I AM' anymore?

[Martin123]

@Preetom Nop. And funnily enough the less I “run into the big I am” the more it tends to reveal itself to me